Russ Meyer

 The man had a clear idiosyncratic vision, the technical ability to realize that vision and the professional skills to retain creative control. That’s the total package.

I'm fairly confident that Meyer was the greatest artist to have devoted himself to the sexploitation genre film. If that contradicts something I've said elsewhere its because I sometimes forget about Meyer because he's sui generis.

That's not to say Meyer's movies are the most erotic. I'm not sure they're even supposed to be erotic... Meyer views human carnality with the amused distance of a farmer leaning on a fence watching barnyard animals in rut. (If I had Meyer's bosom fetish I might see the question differently. Russ Meyer loved breasts like Imelda Marcos loved shoes.)

His colorful, violent slapstick peep-show world of moronic muscle men colliding with insatiable amoral amazons is so distinctive and fully realized it has the stylistic integrity of a comic strip––every person in a Meyer movie looks like a Meyer character. (Many of his actors were chosen primarily for physical attributes yet he consistently got professional quality performances from people who couldn’t possibly be professional actors. Meanwhile, George Lucas cannot even get a professional performance from Samuel Jackson or Liam Neeson.)

Trying to think where he fits in the big picture, I'd say he’s a comparable to Jean-Luc Goddard or Richard Lester… a daring self-indulgent stylist and artistic prankster who did a lot to shape the texture and vocabulary of modern media. There’s a lot of Sam Fuller in Meyer’s passionate earthy clarity but ever-earnest Fuller was not a prankster. Like Hitchcock, Meyer hid his artistry behind the façade of a brazen showman. (Meyer actually wrote the bizarre circus-poster descriptions of the movies quoted below, defying anyone to take him seriously.)

Stanley Kubrick and Russ Meyer make a neat pair. Both men were 1950s print photographers who moved to film–an unusual career path. They were also, not coincidentally, two of the few directors with a visual style so distinctive you can readily identify their movies from a scene. Both men quickly mastered the conventional forms by the early 1960s and spun off into wild innovation in the mid-late 60s. Neither man felt he could work effectively in the Hollywood frame-work. Meyer's ultimate influence on trash cinema was comparable to Kubrick's ultimate influence on the rest of cinema. (It's tempting to think sex movies are easy. But if that's the case why is VIXEN so much better than Kubrick's EYES WIDE SHUT? Within his limited realm Meyer was supreme.)

Meyer was a confident artist of the "making it look deceptively easy" school. His technique was rock-solid classical with detours for expressionistic montage effects. Even the wildest passages are natural and unobtrusive. Few directors were blessed with a better sense of pace. (Meyer's earlier movies can drag sometimes, but we must compare apples to apples. Meyer's slower early films were breathlessly paced compared head-to-head with the era's other grind-house movies.) It all goes down as smooth as television but, unlike TV, you actually feel it; combining the hypnotic accessibility of a cool medium with the raw power of a hot medium. Meyer was one of the first to grasp the post-modern lesson that our media driven conception of the world has become so artificial that parody, rather than satire, is our clearest lens for seeing the big picture.

Russ Meyer is most associated with his conception of our native fertility goddess; a brand of tall powerful sexually driven young rural woman with ample hips, a wasp waist and outlandish breasts. (Meyer himself trade-marked "Bosomania" to describe his movies.) He started as a 1950s pin-up photographer shooting some classic stuff… Playboy layouts and such. Then wife Eve Meyer was one of the early Playboy centerfolds. (I've always wondered what she was like. Was she the model for all Meyer's celluloid man-eating vixens?)

Random observation: Some similar artists include John Waters, Frank Tashlin, Frank Frazetta, Busby Berkley, Tex Avery, Al Capp, the Coen Brothers.

Meyer's 1959 movie THE IMMORAL MISTER TEAS did more than any other to shape the 1960s "nudie" movie. From then on Meyer made better and better sexploitation movies until he’d out-stripped the genre entirely. Eventually he was drawn to Hollywood to make BEYOND THE VALLEY OF THE DOLLS. (Written by Roger Ebert, an early critical champion of Meyer. Ebert has brilliant instincts. He’s been the most consistently correct movie critic since… well, since anybody. IMO.)

When sexploitation went XXX in the 1970s Russ Meyer chose to stay in the world of drive-in style exploitation. A pity, because he would have been easily the greatest XXX feature film director and might have reshaped the unfortunate fate of the genre.

Listed Chronologically

Russ Meyer - Lorna (DVD)    1965
RM Films DVD / Region 1 (USA).
 $34.49 Add to Cart
Director Russ Meyer's first really good movie. He wasn't really **Russ Meyer** yet but he was already the artistic class of the grindhouse genre. If LORNA was dubbed in Swedish with English subtitles it would function as a 1960s art film. LORNA establishes Meyer's standard storyline of a man unable or unwilling to satisfy the voluptuous small-town demi-goddess he married. In later films the task is impossible because the wife in question is amoral and insatiable. In LORNA, however, husband Jim is just a bum lay. He begs pitifully for sex but has no concept of foreplay. Jim works with two incredible low-lifes who we first meet stalking a woman on the street and assaulting her in her home. Every day Jim goes to work and endures these guy's insinuations about his wife. Meanwhile torpedo-breasted Lorna goes skinny-dipping and meets a killer escaped from prison. When the killer has his way with Lorna she falls for him body and soul and becomes like a puppy following him around. It all ends violently.

The classic adult movie was all about passion. In 1965 the law prevented the genre from exploring sexual passion so the passion often came in the form of violence. It's all well and good to condemn the violent misogyny of the 1960s adult film but it's irresponsible to blame the creators. The authors of the violence in LORNA were State censorship boards, ambitious politicians, protestant church groups and the Catholic church, all of whom found violence against women far more acceptable than nudity and who forced their sickness on the movie industry. It's tempting to think "in 1965 you could show breasts but not pubic hair," but the reality was far more complex. The censors had complete arbitrary control and dictated the entire tone of a movie. The early 1960s was a world where people were arrested for using the wrong words. (There are many recordings available today of Lenny Bruce being arrested, hand-cuffed and dragged off stage for using bad language, so one needn't take my word for it.) Yes, you could show breasts but characters couldn't use bad language or describe sex in any literal way. Aside from nipples the 1965 adult film was tamer than today's prime time TV. In one scene here we hear Lorna begging Jim to do some particular thing in bed but we have no clue what it is. On TV today we would know exactly what it is.

Even by Meyer's own standards the carnival barker/medicine show claim that star Lorna Maitland is "the new standard of beauty by which all women shall be judged" is extraordinary.

"Ever wonder why wives wander? Without artistic surrender, without compromise, without question or apology, an incredibly sensual motion picture was made. LORNA. The story of a woman. LORNA graphically portrays the emotions of a voluptuous young wanton. Lorna, married for one year...yet never fully gratified by her husband...is left alone...too long...too often. But Lorna is a woman too much for one man, although loved by her husband, desired by another, she finds fulfillment in the arms of a brutal stud. Starring the outrageously abundant, cantilevered Lorna Maitland - the new standard of beauty by which all women shall be judged." Black & White/79 Minutes

 

Russ Meyer - Faster Pussycat Kill! Kill! (DVD)    1965
RM Films DVD / Region 1 (USA).
 $38.49 Add to Cart
Directed by Russ Meyer. Just released! Meyer's most famous cult-movie and arguably the artistically greatest movie made for the sexploitation market. Let me put it this way: When a sexploitation movie makes any list of 100 greatest American films this will be the one. Immensely influential. half of our southwest desert based indy film genre is somehow inspired by FASTER PUSSYCAT. All film school graduates have seen it.

The story of a new breed of SUPERWOMEN emerging out of the ruthlessness of our times. We are introduced to three BUXOM Go-Go girls: VARLA, ROSIE, and BILLIE, wildly dancing the Watusi before the leers, jeers and lecherous come-ons of their drooling all-male audience. The violence, implicit in the girls' tease, is quickly moved out of the microcosmic bar into the outside world as they literally let go of themselves, embarking on a wild, violent, deadly journey of vengeance on all men. VARLA, the outrageously abundant KARATE MASTER leader of the pack, breaks the arms and back of one man, runs her Porsche over two others, grinds a fourth, a muscleman, against a wall and, eventually, deliberately goes down the path of her own self-destruction, dragging her two BUXOTIC cohorts along with her."

"Welcome to the world of female violence. Meet the sumptuously sexy Varla, played at full throttle and with well-upholstered relish by the half-Japanese, half-Cherokee Tura Satana. She's having a lovely time with her two go-going pals, dancing the Watusi in a sleazy bar packed with leering, jeering macho-men. And after a hard day's grooving, what better than a drag race in the desert? So it's off we go, hurtling across the California sands as we follow the trio of homicidal go-go gals, hell bent on wreaking revenge on all things male, as they embark on a desperate desert drive-thru, taking a bikini-clad wimp hostage and leaving a trail of human wreckage in their wake. Filmed in glorious black and blue, Faster Pussycat has been hailed as "the best movie ever made" and a "definite Desert Island Movie". Celluloid proof that Russ Meyer is a complete and utter cult."

Black & White/83 Minutes
 

Russ Meyer - Mudhoney (aka Rope Of Flesh) (DVD)    1966
RM Films DVD / Region 1 (USA).
 $34.49 Add to Cart
Directed by Russ Meyer. Something of a masterpiece. the apogee of Meyer's mastery of the traditional euphemistic art-theatre movies before he began recreating the genre. (If Meyer were Kubrick LORNA would be THE KILLING and MUDHONEY would be PATHS OF GLORY.) Gritty Faulkner-esque classical tragedy in sleazoid form. Script, adapted by Raymond Friday Locke from his novel Streets Paved with Gold. Ex-con Calif walks into 1933 Spooner, Missouri on his way to California. Broke, he takes a job with Lute Wade and walks smack into the middle of a messy situation. Lute's daughter Hannah is married to Sidney (Hal Hopper, father of Jay North. TV's Dennis the Menace), a low-down wife-beating drunk who passes the time in a whorehouse while waiting for his father-in-law to die. When Calif's passion for Hannah becomes to intense to hide Sidney and a local lunatic preacher begin conspiring against him, orchestrating a smear campaign that leads to mayhem.

"MUDHONEY...a film of ribaldry and violence, extracted from the juice of life...featuring "that girl from LORNA," the pneumatic LORNA MAITLAND, and the beautiful buxotic from Germany...RENA HORTEN, the embodiment of the body. MUDHONEY runs the gamut of emotions...love...hatred...sadism...a story never told so frankly...so intimately. Also featuring the buxom LEE BALLARD...the flirtatious Sister Hanson...add the two country harlots, Eula and Clara Bell, and you, indeed, have too much for one town. MUDHONEY...passion debased by lust...leaving its taste of evil." Black & White/92 Minutes

 

Russ Meyer - Vixen (DVD)    1968
RM Films DVD / Region 1 (USA).
 $34.49 Add to Cart
Directed by Russ Meyer. Fascinating movie. VIXEN began the even more florid second half of Meyer's career. The story is sort of Meyer style backward version of John Ford's MOGAMBO. Tom is a Canadian bush pilot who flies wealthy tourists into vast wilderness. Like all Meyer heroes he's solid but long-suffering because his wife, Vixen, is a wild animal. He exhausts himself putting it to her at every opportunity, but it's just not enough. While he flies she seduces everyone in reach including a Mountie, a tourist couple and her own brother.

Vixen is an inveterate racist willing to bed her brother but not his best friend and fellow motorcycle fiend who happens to be black. The poor guy suffers Vixen's prick-teasing and racist taunts at every turn until he falls in with the Irish Republican Army. (Weird enough for ya'?) VIXEN is as political as everything else made in 1968.

Here's how good Russ Meyer was. A little after this movie Gary Graver starred VIXEN star Erica Gavin in ERIKA'S HOT SUMMER. Graver was a good director and cinematographer. He was as professional as adult directors got. But VIXEN is about 10 times better than ERIKA'S HOT SUMMER. Russ Meyer was 10 times better than good.

Says ROGER EBERT, of the Chicago Sun Times, of VIXEN.: "Meyer's best...a merciless put-on...ERICA GAVIN...electrifying!" "Russ Meyer's VIXEN. will jar your senses...jerk your emotions...straddle your soul. The mind-boggling ERICA GAVIN...the standard by which all "voluptua" must be measured. VIXEN...is she woman...or animal? VIXEN...embrace her!" Color/70 Minutes

 

Russ Meyer - Cherry, Harry And Raquel (DVD)    1969
RM Films DVD / Region 1 (USA).
 $34.49 Add to Cart
Directed by Russ Meyer. Seminal effort from the Dean of the US nudie film, featuring the talents of Uschi Digard, who was born to be in a Meyers movie. These flicks are way to good... like Orson Welles doing a parody of a Harry Novack movie.

"CHERRY, HARRY, & RAQUEL...ménage a trois...loosely translated by Russ Meyer..."a trio is not necessarily a crowd." CHERRY, HARRY, & RAQUEL...an incisive probe into the very soul of those people that both profit and lose as a result of the heinous narcotics racket. A dusty Arizona border town and vast expanses of baked desert provide the magnificent scenic backdrop for fast cars, blazing guns, and super-ample women...each and all hot! The billowy registered nurse CHERRY...of exotic muscle-relaxing procedures...HARRY....erotic love ruttings on the hot desert sands...CHERRY...unfettered, pointedly endowed, and over-sexed, and featuring the super abundant USCHI DIGARD...the bosom vast, as Astrid "SOUL" Lillimor!" Color/71 Minutes

 

Russ Meyer - Up! (DVD)    1976
RM Films DVD / Region 1 (USA).
 $34.49 Add to Cart
Directed by Russ Meyer. Any movie that opens with Kitten Natividad sitting naked high in a tree saying "Hi, I'm the Greek chorus" bears close study. There's obviously more to his work than over-sized breasts and hillbilly antics, but it all seems like a sly critical trap, like an exploding cigar. The second you say anything serious about a Russ Meyer movie, you expect Russ himself to pop up and say "gotcha!" That said, his films are too adept to take his self-deprecating self-promotion seriously:

Russ Meyer's "tried and true" formula is on-target again...outrageously buxom women and dumb, muscular men laying their sexually aggressive prowess on the line. Yes, it's all here in Russ Meyer's UP! Two-timers, cops, robbers, joints, and mind-boggling, bra-busting women. SWEET LI'L ALICE ...fast, foxy, and fertile. the HEADPERSON (Candy Samples aka Mary Gavin)...awesome abundance. POCOHONTAS...cantilevered, protuberant. the CHESTY YOUNG THING...conical, unrestrained. LIMEHOUSE...pneumatic bliss - oriental style. GWENDOLYN...what a pair of jungle drums. the GREEK CHORUS (Kitten Natividad)...the biggest and the best, and the "smothering" MARGO WINCHESTER...assault with a deadly bosom, plus the usual assortment of good lookin', virile, awesomely hung, klutzy men. There's always somethin' BIG about a Russ Meyer movie!

 
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